Training Response Inhibition to Obesogenic Foods

Study Summary

Dietary choices, and in particular, excess calorie intake leading to obesity, are strong, but reversible risk factors for cancer. For example, foods high in added sugars are low-nutrient, high calorie foods that increase the risk of cancer by promoting weight gain. As such, the reduction of sweets is consistent with American Institute for Cancer Research and the American Cancer Society dietary recommendations. Behavioral interventions to alter diet have limited long-term efficacy, most likely because eating decisions are governed by automatic neurocognitive processes that are not addressed in conventional interventions. In particular, the ability to refrain from consuming unhealthy, but widely available, palatable foods, is increasingly understood to depend on inhibitory control, i.e., the ability to cut off action tendencies that are put in motion by innate drives towards rewarding behaviors. Recent work by our team and others have demonstrated that computer-based inhibitory control trainings result in short-term, specific changes in behavior, such as reducing intake of salty snack food, chocolate, and alcoholic beverages. An automatized, home computer-based inhibitory control training offers the potential of an inexpensive and highly disseminable method of lowering cancer risk across wide swaths of the population. As such, we aim to evaluate the feasibility, acceptability, mechanism of action, effectiveness and persistence of a home computer-based inhibitory control training. In particular, we hypothesize that a high-repetition training in inhibitory control will result in increased adherence to a low-sugar diet, and that effects will be mediated through improved inhibitory control. We further hypothesize that gamefying the training will improve efficacy because it will boost compliance with the daily trainings. We also hypothesize that the training will be most effective for those starting of with impaired inhibitory control, as well as those with strongest desir

Interventions

• BEHAVIORAL No-Added-Sugar Diet